Pat Ryan

I grew up in Colorado Springs and began college studying fine art at the University of Colorado Boulder. I later transferred to the San Francisco Art Institute, where I earned a BFA in New Genres. That education taught me to question assumptions, build ideas through experimentation, and pay attention to the experience an object or environment creates.

From there, my path became less predictable. I worked as a tower-crane mechanic in Los Angeles, learning the machinery, electrical systems, and practical realities behind heavy equipment. After a serious hand injury, I returned to Colorado and earned a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering from the University of Colorado Denver.

Art taught me how to see possibilities. Engineering taught me how to test them. Industrial design became the place where those two habits could work together.

After graduation, I expected to begin a conventional power-engineering career. Instead, I found an 800-square-foot industrial space in the former Windsor Farm Dairy building at 18th and Blake in Denver and opened an art and industrial-design studio called GOOG—a name borrowed from my niece's nickname.

The studio grew into one of Denver's early architectural-fabrication shops. In 1999, GOOG moved to 765 Santa Fe Drive and became a multidisciplinary design hub and gallery. We made furniture, lighting, art, and architectural installations; collaborated on commercial and residential projects around the country; and helped establish First Friday events on Santa Fe alongside Artists on Santa Fe.

That work shaped a conviction I still carry: concept, graphics, material, product, fabrication, and installation are not separate stories. When they share a clear idea, the result feels coherent.

In 2009, I joined a software startup and spent the next six years working across digital products and communications. I built pitch decks, campaigns, data tools, trade-show environments, landing pages, prototypes, and custom software for business clients.

The technology work sharpened my approach to rapid prototyping, information design, and user behavior. It also made one thing clear: I missed working at the scale of objects and spaces, where an idea has weight, texture, tolerances, and consequences.

I returned to design and fabrication from a studio on Colfax and Syracuse. In 2015, I began working directly with the ownership team behind Stanley Marketplace, helping shape a vision for the former aviation building through creative direction, brand narrative, interior identity, renderings, wayfinding, signage, and custom fabrication.

That experience became the foundation for Sites & Space: an owner-side design advocacy practice for property owners, developers, and hospitality operators who need a clear design program, a coherent concept framework, and a usable set of decisions before those decisions become expensive to change.

Today, I bring that direction into turnkey FF&E, CAD and visualization, industrial product development, graphic design, digital twins, and managed custom fabrication. Stamped documents are produced by licensed outside professionals when a project requires them.

I believe owners deserve a design direction they can understand, approve, and use. The work should connect the business model to the guest experience, the visual identity to the physical environment, and ambitious ideas to the realities of sourcing, documentation, production, and installation.

Curiosity, technical judgment, art-making, and disciplined decisions are all part of that process. I am still most interested in the point where an unusual idea becomes specific enough to make—and good enough to keep.